Amid Budget Woes, Brown Doubles Down on Diversity
Credit: Jonathan Wiggs / The Boston Globe / Getty Images- Brown University announced a series of initiatives designed to boost student diversity.
- It also announced a structural deficit of $46 million.
- Many diversity initiatives presumably involve additional funding.
- The university continues to grapple with race-neutral admissions policies and student recruitment following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action.
While Brown University faces a $46 million budget deficit that promises to worsen, university officials are investing in recruitment initiatives designed to bolster diversity.
What this says about Brown’s priorities and tactics depends on one’s perspective.
Investing in Diversity Initiatives
The 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action reset what’s normal in selective college admissions.
No longer able to consider race in admissions decisions, many universities saw their diversity representation plummet following the fall 2023 enrollment cycle. At Brown, the number of Black students in the class of 2028 (applying in fall 2023) dropped by 6 percentage points from the previous cycle, while the number of Latino/a students fell by 4 percentage points.
When Brown reported those figures in fall 2024, it promised to “expand strategies for future recruitment” to ensure a diverse applicant pool and entering class.
Now the university is making good on its promise. On Dec. 4, Brown announced a set of recruitment initiatives designed to support “diverse students from all backgrounds.”
“In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that greatly limited any consideration of race in admission decisions, Brown remains committed to complying with the law while fostering a diverse and inclusive community as integral to our mission of academic excellence,” university leaders wrote in a statement.
“With a focus on recruitment, matriculation, and retention of a diverse community of students, the university has developed a set of concrete actions focused on ensuring a robust pool of highly qualified diverse students apply to Brown and, once admitted, have access to the resources they need to enroll.”
Tactics include increasing funds to matching financial aid awards from other institutions, creating five regionally based admissions positions, establishing a new alumni relations position to mobilize alumni volunteers to help recruit students from underrepresented communities, and expanding the university’s travel grant program that enables low-income students to visit campus.
The full spectrum of initiatives is far more extensive, but these few examples constitute the ones presumably requiring additional funding.
Dealing With Budget Deficits
Why is that a concern? Because Brown faces a $46 million budget deficit this fiscal year and projects that it could balloon to $90 million next year, though the university’s goal is to limit the deficit to $60 million.
That amount may seem somewhat paltry in the context of Brown’s $1.83 billion operating budget, but it certainly concerns university officials, who blame the problem on flat net revenue, “downward pressure on tuition increases,” increased financial aid, inflation, the rising cost of salaries and benefits, and rapid growth in faculty and staff positions.
In fact, the university points out that over the past decade, staff positions have grown by 28% while the number of faculty has increased by 20%. Undergraduate enrollment grew by 13% during that period, which at least should assuage critics claiming elite colleges refuse to expand enrollments despite their wealth.
Brown plans to curtail staff hires and reduce the number of newly admitted Ph.D. students, who most often receive full funding from the university.
At the same time, it will boost revenue from master’s degree programs, increasing the number of online learners and eventually doubling the number of residential master’s students.
“Shifts in demographics and growth in the demand for advanced degrees provide an opportunity for Brown to extend its impact,” the university’s statement claims.
Universities have come under fire for promoting master’s degrees that operate as cash cows for institutions while saddling students with crippling debt. It’s not exactly clear how much financial aid these programs will offer students, but the implication is that, like many similar universities, Brown plans to take advantage of the public’s healthy appetite for prestigious master’s degrees.
What This Says About Brown
Is Brown foolhardy for investing in diversity recruitment while cutting expenditures in other areas to address a mounting budget deficit? Or should the university receive plaudits for doubling down on its mission to maintain a diverse student body despite ongoing financial concerns?
That, of course, depends on one’s perspective.
Among affected staff, it’s easy to imagine morale might suffer as employees question why positions are cut or frozen while additional investments occur elsewhere within the university.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to fault Brown for finding innovative ways to support its diversity goals even as it manages budgetary headaches.
The university suggests doing so will require some financial prestidigitation in light of its current constraints.
“We are also at the upper limit of the fiscally responsible range for taking contributions from the Brown endowment without reducing future resources available for financial aid, academic support, and other priorities,” its statement reads.
How will Brown increase funding to match financial aid awards from other institutions while staying fiscally prudent?
Perhaps its recently completed fundraising campaign might provide some relief. The “Brown Together” campaign, finalized on Dec. 31, raised almost $4.3 billion. Its priorities included a “Pathways to Diversity & Inclusion Fund” that could help underwrite some of the announced initiatives.
A trickier tightrope to walk will involve hewing to the Supreme Court’s edict and steering clear of potential legal threats associated with diversity recruitment.
Brown’s tactics seem to align with the race-neutral recommendations the Biden administration shared shortly after the Supreme Court decision, such as outreach and recruitment programs and “financial and other support programs to make college attainable,” though today’s revamped recruitment efforts constitute a gray area.
In response to the court’s ruling, the university convened a task force responsible for evaluating its admissions policies and recommending appropriate changes. One recommendation was the reinstatement of standardized testing, a move popular among elite colleges positing that tests provide an opportunity for disadvantaged students to demonstrate academic promise.
Yet the university also decided to continue its early decision and legacy preferences policies, both of which have been determined to favor wealthy applicants. In its report, Brown even admits that “removing legacy preferences could lead to somewhat more diversity in the group of admitted students.”
All of this suggests Brown may be plagued with inherent contradictions and uncertainty, a condition born of the court’s decision on race-conscious admissions and no doubt common, albeit in different manifestations, among the nation’s elite universities.
The roadmap toward solutions doesn’t figure to become clear anytime soon.